Semiotics
by hobbitsdoitbetter
Summary: semiotics: ˌsiːmɪˈɒtɪks,ˌsɛmɪ- noun. The study of signs and symbols and their use or meaning. Sherlock. Molly. A new equation and so much want... He doesn't know what's happening to him. Fluff, slow build. Enjoy!


_Disclaimer:_ This fan fiction is not written for profit and no infringement of copyright is intended. Not beta read so all mistakes are mine. There are updates on the way for "And a Garden..." and "The Rudest Man In London," but this just wouldn't leave me alone... Enjoy!

* * *

~ **SEMIOTICS ~**

* * *

 _Come Hither_

* * *

He's sixteen that first time, drunk and curious and stumbling about at a house party he only went to because Mycroft told him he shouldn't.

(Of course, lately he's been doing a lot of things simply because Mikey had decided to proffer unwanted, brotherly advice).

The girl's pretty and older and seriously fit- Even he can see that. She has this mass of dark hair and bright blue eyes; the jeans and t-shirt she's wearing are so tight they could have been painted on.

She's regal. Cocky.

As tall as him and just as sure of herself.

 _She_ _'_ _s nothing like the vapid little waifs his mothers_ _'_ _friends bring to the house,_ he thinks, although why that might be of interest is not something on which he has ever wished to dwell.

She's been eyeing him all night, shooting him these pouting, arch little looks; as far as he can make out, they're the modern equivalent of what Mummy would term a "come-hither stare." He'd had a spliff and a couple of cans and by the time she makes her move he's nursing a vodka and red bull, trying to ignore the way his stomach is lurching about and making him feel sweaty and uncomfortable.

He's not drunk, he tells himself, not really, and so he doesn't need to ask himself whether "coming hither," with some bird he barely knows (and whose name he will never remember) is a good idea.

" _Coming hither,_ _"_ _is what everyone else in his year is doing, so why the Hell shouldn_ _'_ _t he?_

It's quick and brief. Wet and breathless. She takes his hand and pulls him outside. Pushes him against the back wall of the house and gets to work. He comes, his trousers and boxers around his ankles, his bare arse rubbed raw by the untreated brick. The unlit garden is wreathed in smoke and it's so cold his breath mists in front of his face. The entire place seems to be bouncing vaguely to the mixed beats of vomiting, coitus and- because it's everywhere this year- _Gangster_ _'_ _s Paradise_.

In his later years he will sometimes find himself vaguely appalled by the fact that he lost his virginity to the sound of _Gangster_ _'_ _s_ bloody _Paradise_.

The girl laughs when he's done and takes his hand, pulling it between her wet thighs and using his long fingers to get herself off. She throws her head back, moaning and gritting her teeth and watching her is almost more interesting for Sherlock than finally getting fucked.

When she's finished she kisses him once, sloppily, and tells him it was good; He sees her an hour later, stumbling home with a bloke from two forms ahead of him who kicked the shite out of him during his ill-fated try-outs for the rugby team his first year.

Sherlock stays in the garden, in the dark. Breathing hard. He tries to find anything different within himself, anything new- But there's nothing.

 _Like so much else in life, turns out sex is a disappointment too._

Head tipped upwards and gaze turned star-wards, he lets his heartbeat calm and his skin cool and as he does so he muses on how relieved he is to get all that virginity nonsense out of the way.

* * *

 _A Science of Signs and Meanings_

* * *

The issue which kick-starts it all is, to his surprise, relatively minor.

It's not a world-shaking event wherein he gets to save anyone, or run over rooftops, or even threaten some ne'er-do-well with some manly fisticuffs. It's not a fabulously twisty, 10-on-his-own-scale mystery complete with countdown to Armageddon and himself and John racing against the clock, Mary in tow-

No, the issue which causes all the problems is a bag of chips (or rather, the consequences of sharing them).

Because he's sitting in the Molly Hooper's office in Bart's, spinning around on her swivel chair and wondering when she'll be back from the canteen. She went to get a late lunch and Sherlock took this opportunity to go to her favourite chipper and get her (delicious, vinegar encrusted, paper-covered) bag of chips.

He also took the opportunity to break into her office and wait for her to find him so he can share them.

And so he finds himself sitting in the dark, the smell of the chips wafting under his nose and really, he's rather hungry and if Molly doesn't get a move on he's thinking of just eating them all himself-

He's musing on whether he should do so when he thinks he hears her entering the Path Lab.

Careful to close the door behind him (Stamford will be tedious about being able to smell the food in the morgue) Sherlock steals forward to check, intent on surprising Molly if he can.

What he sees surprises him greatly however, for as he creeps forward he realises that Molly is in fact back from the canteen. She may have been back from the canteen for quite some time. The reason she hadn't come back to her office and allowed him to surprise her with London's finest fish and chips is that she's fallen asleep, sitting in front of the dissection table.

She's leaning over it, her head on her crossed arms, and he might be wrong but she's… She's snoring, very softly.

He finds the sound rather… soothing.

Her breath is causing one tendril of her plait, come loose and drifting against her cheek, to sway in time with her rising shoulders and as Sherlock notices that he feels something… Something altogether unexpected wrench through him. It feels like being squeezed from within by an inexplicably pleasant vice. His hands tighten against his palms there where they hang by his side and his heart seems to twist as he takes in her pale, slumbering face. The long, dark sweep of her lashes. Without knowing why he finds himself moving forward, picking her up gently and carrying her to her office-

She has a long leather sofa in there on which she occasionally sleeps.

He tells himself that he'll put her there rather than letting her get a crick in her neck.

As he sets her down on the chair she frowns slightly, shaking her head to herself. Her nose scrunches that way it does when she's confused and again Sherlock feels that inexplicable something in his chest twist. He has to fight the urge to reach out his fingers, to try and smooth that puckered little frown line and set her at her ease.

Fifteen minutes later she's in the back of one of Mycroft's cars, her head still on his shoulder, his arm pressed against hers, the both of them bound for her flat in Southwark.

He carries her up the steps to her flat, the bag of chips perched precariously on her chest and when he lays her on her bed she smiles a soft sleepy smile.

* * *

 _The Lesser Game_

* * *

He dreams in the days which follow, but he doesn't understand the dreams.

They're not fantasies, or nightmares: They're more memories.

They make him so uncomfortable he wants to crawl out of his skin, and for the life of him he can't understand why.

* * *

It's always the last night he spent with Janine, the one punctuated by John's incredulous visit the next morning; Janine had turned up for dinner, dressed to the nines and smelling of her most luxurious bath products and perfume. She'd been funny, smart and charming- Everything a prospective girlfriend was supposed to be, in point of fact.

 _Were he the sort of man who gets involved,_ Sherlock often muses, _she would have been irresistible._

But he was not that sort of man, and nothing was going to change that; Janine was a means to an end and nothing more. And given how important an end that was, Sherlock had been careful to wear one of his suits but to set the tone to a relaxed one, as befitted a couple slowly becoming more comfortable with one another. To that end he'd worn no jacket, rolled his shirt-sleeves up. He'd made pasta and let her take over from the cooking when he proved himself rather incapable of following a recipe-

He'd walked up behind her as she cooked, nuzzling into her neck and making her giggle.

She wasn't to know, but he was mimicking almost exactly an encounter he'd witnessed between John and Mary when last he'd eaten at theirs.

(When one recreates a facsimile of affection, after all, one is best taking one's cues from a real-life example.)

His playfulness had worked; Janine had made her most concerted effort to get him into bed thus far. She'd kissed him, coaxed him, offered all sorts of indulgences he hadn't allowed himself since his Uni days. One hand had found its way inside his flies, and thence inside his smalls, her fingers working him rhythmically, the pleasure a pleasant, distant thing. He'd been forced to improvise, explaining softly that he wasn't ready for that level of intimacy, that he really needed to know she'd be willing to wait for him…

He'd shot her the same look he used to use on Molly when he wanted something as he'd done this, though he had toned it down a little.

Head bent and cocked to the side though, lip bitten, staring at her through both his lashes and his curls, she hadn't stood a chance of resisting him, he had not a doubt of that.

So she'd nodded. Kissed him. Told him she understood.

She'd fallen asleep in his arms in the end, charmed by his apparent lack of ulterior motives-

He, on the other hand, hadn't slept a wink.

As she'd lain there, her body turned into him and rising gently with her breathing, Sherlock had stared at her and realised that she was really rather beautiful. She was everything he was supposed to want, he'd thought, and yet he felt no real desire at all. He thought of the Woman, of his nameless partners in Uni. Of poor Violet Hunter, his first (and only) girlfriend, of Victor Trevor and their odd, intense, unspoken connection. He thought of the things people always said about he and John, the things they seemed to now think about he and John and Mary-

But though he had pondered all of this he'd felt no rush of lust. No temptation.

Just like his string of experiments in university, all he experienced was a distant curiosity. The indifferent knowledge that possible pleasure was his for the asking, should he decide to wake her up.

No, the only thing he'd been able to picture with any clarity had been Molly Hooper's warm, dark eyes, though why such a thing should occur to him was a mystery.

When Janine had woken the next morning he'd urged her into the shower, unable to shake the sense that something was… clinging to him. Something he didn't want. Something he couldn't bear the weight of. He'd stayed in bed, listening to her sing with half and ear and trying to work out why he feels so…. Strange. So on edge.

John didn't see it when he arrived, but then John never did.

* * *

 _Mind The Gap_

* * *

Spring comes, then summer.

Life in Baker Street continues as it ever did, with arson and kidnappings and mayhem aplenty.

 _After all, man cannot live by bread alone, etc. etc. etc._

The Fauxriarty Case (and Sherlock is sure that he is dealing with a fraud) takes up no small amount of his time but it's not the only thing in his life: after all, the Sprogling (as he insists on calling little Jennifer Watson, though not to her parents' faces) has arrived and he is adjusting to life as a godparent. He also finds himself adjusting to life as an employee of Her Majesty's Government (which is what he now technically is). For the most part though, he is content: he has his friends around him. His family. It's highly unlikely that he'll face another exile.

And then there's Molly. Molly who spends more time with him now. Molly who has apparently decided to forgive him for how he treated her in the midst of the Magnusson case.

If John is his best friend then Molly is something else, he often thinks. Something… different. Something special.

Whenever he thinks such a thing he reprimands himself for the sentimentality of it and yet he can't seem to stop himself.

Not even the notion of Mycroft guessing can make the thought go away.

* * *

Sometimes he finds himself staring at John and Mary when they're in the flat, watching the way they interact.

It's not just the joking or the teasing, or even their carefulness with their daughter that holds his attention, oh no.

 _It's something far more perturbing than that._

Because when he watches his friends, he feels an odd sort of… longing. An ache for something, though he can't rightly say _what_ (which is infuriating). It is entirely different from the pull and tug of addiction, entirely separate from the pleasant, familiar pain of filial fondness. No, this feeling makes him restless. Unsatisfied. More than once he finds himself wishing he could speak to Molly of it-

For there's a, a desire in him, he thinks that's what one would call it.

A want, not to be John with Mary, or even be Mary with John, but an altogether more subtle, illusive… something.

His hands feel empty and he can't help frowning, as he stares at the couple.

He doesn't understand it; he's not jealous, exactly, more… curious?

 _That's it_ , he thinks, _he's curious._

 _And what could be more natural than a curious Sherlock Holmes?_

For he finds himself wondering more and more what the sort of affection John and Mary share feels like. _He finds himself wondering that a lot_. He can fake it, of course, and has on occasion; he's been adept at flirting to get his way since his early teens. But he's never felt this… want, this desire to be with someone in the way his best friends are with each other-

When the ache gets too much he stalks to his room. Amuses himself by playing his violin.

The piece he starts on varies but he always ends up playing The Watsons' Wedding Waltz and he finds that infuriating too.

* * *

 _Clarity_

* * *

The moment he stumbles out of the warehouse, dishevelled and filthy and rather worryingly bloodied, he hears her.

He shouldn't, he knows that. There are police sirens and the sounds of a chopper overhead and members of Mycroft's security team barking at him to tell them where Moran and his Fauxriarty impostor fell. Search-lights criss-cross the sky, flashing into his eyes and blinding him. Smoke from the fire in which Moran intended he, John and Mary to all perish is billowing about him, turning the air acrid and unbreathable. It's making him cough, causing him to double over in pain, his abused limbs howling in protest, lungs hacking and retching,

and yet-

He hears the sound of thundering footsteps, feels the beat of them against the muck beneath his feet as she approaches.

He turns to look at her and before he knows what he's doing he's opened his arms and Molly's launched herself at him, gripping his neck so tightly it seems like she'll never let go.

He feels the impact of her body against his. The breath of her against his cheek. It hurts a little, knocks the wind out of him- And yet he doesn't push her away. _He can_ _'_ _t imagine wanting to push her away, just as he can_ _'_ _t imagine why he wouldn_ _'_ _t want to_. She's tightened her arms about him, muttering that he's a git and a bastard and a liar and that she's so, so glad he's alright, so glad that he's survived-

The warmth of her, the, the _thereness_ of her, it makes his breath catch and his heart thud in a way he cannot rightly describe and in that moment he thinks he's more aware of her than he's been of anyone in his life.

So he does something which has never felt perfectly natural before, though it does now: He kisses her.

And Molly, being Molly, and being entirely too sweet and entirely too good and entirely too much in long with him to do anything else (he hopes) does the obvious and kisses him back.

 _He feels the bliss of it from the roots of his hair to the soles of his feet._

After a long second Anthea clears her throat and he sets the small pathologist feet back on the ground- _When had he lifted her that high?_ Anthea tells both he and Molly that he needs a doctor, that he should come with her.

Though he complies with her request to set Molly down, however, he doesn't leave the pathologist's embrace. He doesn't let go of her hand.

And he belatedly realises (with a dawning sense of bewilderment) that this is because he doesn't want to be without her.

* * *

The sense of bewilderment takes more than six months to leave him.

The desire to not be without his pathologist though, that lasts a lifetime and oh but it makes him glad.


End file.
